Technology used

Overview

"If your system runs at a high rate of speed yet remains idle for extended periods of time during changeover…well, that’s a production killer that simply doesn’t work in our environment."
Henry Perez,FSSI’s Chief Operating Officer

Specialising in the printing and mailing of financial statements, healthcare documents and other sensitive information, FSSI (Financial Statement Services, Inc.) is a business subject to work-level variations. During busy times, it mails up to 15 million documents each month. And that number is growing.

Business Needs

FSSI needed to improve mailing speed and efficiency to accommodate the demands of a growing clientele. Many of these clients are served through same-day service level agreements (SLAs) requiring that documents be printed, inserted and entered into the mail stream the same day the print file is received by FSSI.

The company also wanted to reduce downtime. “One of our requirements was to significantly reduce set-up and reconciliation times between applications,” said Henry Perez, FSSI Chief Operating Officer. “There are different inserter configurations and modes for flats, 6x9 envelopes and standard #10 envelopes. If your system runs at a high rate of speed yet remains idle for extended periods of time during changeover… well, that’s a production killer that simply doesn’t work in our environment.”

Solution

Capable of handling up to 270,000 pieces of mail and more than 70 changeovers per day, the Epic inserting solution helped FSSI process items much more quickly while also reducing the downtime that occurs between different types of job runs. It accomplishes this by combining letter and flat insertion capabilities in a single machine. Automation capabilities allow mailers to quickly switch between flat and letter jobs, helping to reduce downtime and improve capacity planning. The Epic inserter’s modular nature also allows organisations to add further inserting capabilities as work volumes demand.

Benefits

"Now we can actually automate smaller flats jobs with the confidence that we can be back to high speed inserting quickly."
Henry PerezFSSI’s Chief Operating Officer

The speed and automation of the Epic inserter has helped FSSI dramatically reduce changeover time between jobs while automating smaller jobs that would have previously had to have been processed manually. This has helped FSSI both meet stringent SLAs and target new jobs.

As Perez explained, "If we're running an inserter that's processing letters then have to set the machine up in a flats configuration, a significant volume is needed to make it worth the changeover time. For a smaller job, it would take more time for changeover than to actually insert the job. But if we can changeover in six minutes, it makes sense to do it."